


Just a patient

by bookmawkish



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Dreams, Dreamsharing, Evil Loki (Marvel), Feral Behavior, Feral Loki, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loki (Marvel) Angst, Loki Whump, Medic!Reader, Multi, Possessed Loki, SHIELD, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-04-23 21:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14341233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookmawkish/pseuds/bookmawkish
Summary: Thor clears his throat, warningly, and Loki’s shoulders, which had been tensing for attack, slump back again. He lowers his head in grudging compliance and his long hair curtains his face. It’s only then you notice that he’s trembling all over, a tiny, almost invisible sign of strain.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For anon on Tumblr, who asked for “May I suggest a Loki/Reader prompt? What about Avengers!Loki/Reader (aka, he may be homicidal and insane, but he’s hot and he needs someone to hug him? Lol!)
> 
> I hope this suits well enough. <3

You’re pretty sure you’re not qualified for this.

Training at S.H.I.E.L.D. takes up a lot of time, even for new agents - and you’re hardly new. You’ve been through a bunch of the worst of it: you’ve got bullet scars in your leg and trauma scars in your brain, but you’re still one of the sturdiest field medics they have and today of all days, they need you.

The city is still burning. There are alien corpses in the streets. Huge buildings are hanging onto their stability by slender threads. Every breath of air you take smells tainted and unnatural.

Your organisation is barely holding it together. Your boss is dead. Your team are scattered to all corners. But you - as luck would have it - you have been chosen. The hand of fate, or more accurately the hand of Nick Fury, fell upon your shoulder and destiny spoke thusly: “You qualified? Get your kit now and come with me.”

Again, now you’ve found out what this is, you’re pretty sure you’re not qualified. Actually, you’re not sure anyone is.

This is Stark Tower, where the heaviest of the heavy shit apparently went down. A lot of it seems to be missing, or is lying in piles of rubble in the streets below. Here in the penthouse, there’s a ring of combat specialists with their backs to you. Two deep. All heavily armed, all the weapons pointing downwards at something on the floor.

And standing slightly to one side, looking all golden and glowing but also slightly like somebody just ate the last slice of his pizza, it’s the Asgardian god of thunder. Thor has his arms folded. He’s ludicrously huge, grimy from combat and his lips are pursed in an unmistakeable sign of upset, the famous hammer clasped loosely in one fist.

Despite the lack of activity, this place still feels like an active war zone. On instinct, you yell out: “Medic!” to announce your status and purpose  (and to avoid getting shot on sight).

Thor and a couple of the combat grunts turn to look at you. The nearest grunt jerks his head, motioning you forward, and he steps aside enough to let you through.

At the centre of the circle, Loki gives you the most venomous glare you’ve ever seen from any living thing, but he doesn’t move. He’s half-lying across a wrecked crater in the floor and he’s about as broken as you’ve ever seen anyone look without being actually scattered across the freeway in asymmetrical lumps. Even from this distance you can hear the air wheezing in and out as he breathes. That’s…not good. 

“He‘s not getting off on a technicality by crying prisoner maltreatment,” says Fury, from somewhere behind the wall of guns. “Check him out. Document every fucking busted fingernail. Sign the paperwork. And make sure he doesn’t die out of spite before we lock his ass up for good.”

“He won’t hurt you,” adds Thor, in a bass rumble that sounds like it’s echoing in a cave. “I won’t allow it.” From the floor, Loki makes an ugly noise between a laugh and a choke.

In war zones you’ve treated patients under fire. You’ve taken bullets while saving lives. You’ve dressed burns while the building next to you explodes. The focus must always be on the life under your hands - a steady brain goes with steady hands.

It’s harder to be calm now than it has ever been.

_He’s just a patient. He’s just a patient._

Who is looking at you with the eyes of a rabid cat, glittering and feral and totally mad.

_Just another patient._

You kneel down and reach out a hand to start the examination. His eyes narrow just a little, the bruised-looking skin around them creasing. Thor clears his throat, warningly, and Loki’s shoulders, which had been tensing for attack, slump back again. He lowers his head in grudging compliance and his long hair curtains his face. It’s only then you notice that he’s trembling all over, a tiny, almost invisible sign of strain. 

When you lay your hands on him it feels like a hum, the buzz of a million frantic bees in a hive. He makes a hissing sound which is probably meant to be threatening but sounds a lot more like misery as you start to examine him.

Alien he may be, but he’s close enough built to human to carry out the usual checks. Broken ribs. All of them. Collapsed lung, at least one. Dislocated shoulder, possible fracture. Skull intact, by some miracle. Internal bleeding, almost certainly, and judging by the way he’s holding himself it’s in the stomach. Check for sweat, chilled skin, oedema, patches of pooled blood beneath the skin. Your hands move swiftly, carefully, trained by years of practice to be thorough but gentle. There are old scars here as well as new. Loki snarls almost continually under his breath in a low mutter, but with no real strength behind the sound, like a bad-tempered but whipped circus tiger.

_Just a patient._

You’re not sure when you pull out of your professional focus long enough to realise that Loki isn’t snarling at you anymore. He’s quiet. And he’s heavy.

Once when you were young you stayed for a summer with your cousins on their dude ranch. You helped them tend the horses. The horses had been big soft creatures built like armchairs, designed to be easy for city boys to handle. You remember picking out their hooves and cleaning the dirt from their flanks, and many times you’d almost been crushed by half a ton of horse deciding  you were doing a wonderful job and you would also make a great leaning post while they took a nap.

Loki is leaning against your shoulder now as you work, putting his full weight on you, just like one of those long-ago horses. The crazy eyes are closed, and his painful whistling breathing is levelling out, becoming quieter. You are uncomfortably reminded that it’s been a long day for him. Invasion, mass murder, defeat. It’ll take it out of a guy. Your hands move with less and less focus as you are distracted by the sheer absurdity of it all. Loki turns his forehead against your arm and seems to be dozing. The lines of his face smooth out, and just for a moment you can look past the crazy and just see him. Broken, pale, fucked-up beyond recognition, but beautiful. Like something that fell out of a fairytale, and not the monster either.

“He heals quickly,” says a quiet voice, and you look up to meet Thor’s eyes. You realise that you’re actually holding Loki in your arms, the pretence of examining him lost to you in favour of just hugging him close. Loki lolls against you, unconscious now and utterly trusting in that state. Thor looks down at him and adds, very sadly: “Do not mistake him. My brother is very dangerous.”

There is blood on Thor’s armour and you doubt that it belongs to either him or Loki. Thousands have died today. Your skin crawls. Against all sense you clutch more tightly onto Loki, as if by doing so you can prevent him from leaping up and becoming the uncontrollable demon he is. Because right here, right now, he’s just a patient. He’s helpless. And he’s yours. 

“Will you sign the paperwork now.”

“Yes,” you say, as Thor gathers the limp form of New York’s destroyer into his arms and takes him from you. Your voice is hoarse, your throat constricted. “Yes. I will.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But that ghost feeling, that memory of Loki’s body leaning weakly, trustingly against yours doesn’t go away, and that definitely isn’t normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a touch of inspiration to continue. XD

You do sign it. You hate yourself for it in some ways, because almost everything about this feels wrong. It _feels_. You _feel_. It is not a benefit in your line of work to feel too deeply. There’s a long section in training which is designed to quash that, in fact. They give you false bodies, half torn apart, with real guts from slaughtered animals so that the smell of shit and the reek of gore isn‘t a surprise. And the others - stage makeup, but real person, real screaming. It desensitises you, so that when the time comes, you can push the severed limbs out of the way, kneel in the blood, and save lives.

And yet today, you feel.  

The paperwork is important, you’ve done it every day of your professional life, so you do it. And it will take the fallen villain out of your life, remove your confusion, return you to normality.

Or it should. 

There’s the bit halfway down the sheet where you record all the injuries in detail ( _show me on the doll where you got beaten to a pulp, Mister Loki_ ): your pen moves over the anonymous, cartoonish line drawn human figures on the page, checking off the wound sites. Torso, stomach. Then the annotations. You write automatically, noting down the symptoms. Loki’s breathing, remembering the sounds the air made in his crushed throat, rattling in his flattened lungs. The cold, dirty sweat on his skin and the edged, inhuman smell of his blood in the air. He’d smelt exhausted. Yes, exhaustion has a scent. It’s bitter and acrid and unmistakable to anyone who’s ever been in a truck with twenty other exhausted people, on their way home from a war zone with filth on their bodies and a tarnish on their souls that no shower will remove.

Every fucking busted fingernail, as requested, Director.

You sign at the bottom of the page. One of those grim-faced men takes the clipboard away from you, and the room immediately empties with startling speed and precision. You’re suddenly alone with a bloodstained, empty crater in the floor and the damning memory of Loki’s weight leant so trustingly against your shoulder. The silence is huge and unnatural and it’s only at this moment that you feel as if you could cry. Cry for every damn thing that’s happened out there and every damn thing that the killer of New York made you feel by just lying there in his own blood and trusting you - _you_ \- when everybody else would have nailed his heart to a wall and smiled while they did it. But you don’t.

“Shit.”

You haven’t cried for over ten years. It’s possible you’ll never cry again. 

So instead you rise, your kit gathered close to you like a shield between you and the world, and you walk out of the ruined tower. There’s no longer anyone trying to guard it. It’s empty and broken and there’s nothing left of value in it. You rather think you know how it feels.

 

And then the world starts trying to go back to normal. Not the next day, or even the next perhaps, but slowly, insidiously, like the way ivy pushes itself under the tough skin of a young tree and starts its stranglehold. People start calling it “The Incident”, like it’s too awful to describe properly - or maybe it’s just that everyone needs a convenient shorthand for “massive unexpected alien invasion which almost destroyed New York, and, by extension, the world.” The cleanup is going to take years, despite what Fox News is saying. Everybody who works in one of the right kinds of agencies is deployed, regardless of their rank, status or previous assignment. The army are shovelling rubble right alongside the air force, and what remains of your unit is out there picking through the detritus for bodies.

Tiring, depressing work: but normal work. Aside from the special boxes into which you are instructed to place anything which has that distinctive, organic alien look and feel, this could be any war zone. Anywhere in the world. Rubble and bodies and long, long days. It’s all very familiar and something in you takes comfort in the repetitive work, the feeling of physical weariness at the end of each day, the ability to sleep like the dead, without dreams. Because after all these years at S.H.I.E.L.D, your dreams are never good. 

 

But that ghost feeling, that memory of Loki’s body leaning weakly, trustingly against yours doesn’t go away, and that definitely isn’t normal. Sometimes you wake in the morning with that phantom weight at our side, real enough to make you jolt upright with your heart hammering. And once or twice you actually attack the phantom, because in that ephemeral moment between sleep and wakefulness the feeling is so incredibly real that you can hear the strained breathing, hear that broken whistle of air. In and out, the push of a half-ruined ribcage against your back. The alien tang of Loki’s sweat, ingrained in the fabric of your pillow. So you slam your arm out, to silence and drive out the interloper in your bed, only to hit the empty mattress (it’s always been empty. There’s never been a trusted, shared weight here, never anyone to lie with you) and leave you in blinking, uncomfortable bewilderment.

You don’t like it. It’s a piece of vulnerability, a loophole to be exploited, and maybe - just maybe - a chink in your armour which may one day prove to be the death of you.

Months pass, and it’s every morning now you wake with Loki at your side, the sensations getting stronger. Once you almost start to choke, a strand of his long dirty hair across your face, breathed into your mouth as you slept and gone as if it had never been once you are fully awake. Still you pretend it isn’t happening. It’s not as if anyone ever asks you how you are. You don’t have friends anymore. The only people you could even vaguely consider companions are all dead.

And that’s working out very well for you, until the one day in the canteen when you’re trying (and failing) to enjoy a sandwich, and a hand falls on your shoulder once again. It’s not Fury this time. It’s a much smaller man, with a slightly sad, distracted air, glasses, and a nervous habit of rubbing the back of his head as he talks.

Belatedly you recognise him, and you get to your feet in surprised, automatic deference. Everyone knows Bruce Banner, or at very least, knows what he’s capable of.

And he’s got that goddamned piece of paper with your signature on it in his hand.

“Yeah, so, this is awkward,” he says, as you come to a some sort of attention in front of him, and he makes a vague patting-down motion with his hands. “Don’t - don’t do that. I’m sorry that I even have to say this, but you need to come with me. Uh. Right now.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It looks like they’re in there because they’re trying to restrain Loki, and of all the bad ideas in the history of bad ideas, this has to be up there in the top ten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Freely admit that this Reader's world-weariness is far too close to my own. XD

Nothing good has ever come from being told that you _must_ do something _right now_. At the best it’s an irritation: probably a job that should by all rights have been someone else’s but that you’ve been landed with due to one of the Unholy Trinity of human behaviours - Ignorance, Indolence or Ineptitude. But at worst it is the precursor to life-changing tragedy.

_You need to come with me right now because your father is dying._

_You need to come with me right now because your house is on fire._

Dull and inured to the way that S.H.I.E.L.D. has used you over the years, you follow Bruce Banner without a word, not even asking for an explanation. It does not do to ask too many questions in your line of work, lest the horror of anticipation put you off your stride. Banner walks before you like a hunted man. There’s no mistaking that posture: it’s common to prisoners of war, and you’ve seen your fair share of those. It’s almost as if the sheer bulk of the monster he carries within him is always there, right on his shoulders, pushing him down wherever he goes. You wonder if he too has dreams that feel too real - dreams of things that he can never be sure of, whether they are memories from a green haze or just his own fears brought to life.

There is a helicopter waiting for you out in the quad, with a couple of guards on it. And the sight of it alone makes all the alarms in your head that have previously only been twittering like uneasy birds spring into roaring, cacophonic life.

Helicopters are for VIPs and the end of the world only.

You’re screwed.

Banner seems to sense your change in mood, and he turns, gives you a look like a dog who’s been caught climbing on the forbidden couch. “Yeah,” he says, with a truly awful attempt at levity, because his eyes are full of anxiety. “We’re riding in style today. Hop in.”

You don’t even attempt to respond. Instead, you bury your thoughts in the clamouring whir of blades as the chopper preps, then soars upwards. For once, you are grateful for the noise, which renders conversation impossible.

“We’re here!”

Bruce Banner is yelling in your face: or at least, he’s raised his voice to be heard over the blades. He’s one of the few people who can both yell and look apologetic at the same time. It’s a gift. You’ve never mastered it. Your colleagues had always told you that you look permanently either annoyed or bereaved (although the phrasing tends to be more along the lines of “Jesus, your _face_. Like you just drank a pint of dog piss or your granny lost a fight with Chuck Norris.”). It’s not like you can help it.

And it’s not like you have colleagues anymore, after The Incident, so what would be the point in trying to change?

“Here” turns out to be somewhere godforsaken like the Ozarks. One of those charmingly isolated communities in Missouri where being called “Knob Lick” is perfectly acceptable and not humorous in the slightest. The helicopter sets down on a cleared patch of mountain land that otherwise has no distinguishing marks, then almost immediately lifts off again as you and Banner duck out from under the blades.

There are crickets, and plentiful flies. The sun is blinding. The undulating stretches of the mountains in the distance are as blue and picturesque as could be imagined. You slip on your shades and follow Banner, who is heading off down the slope at speed, as if he’s realised he’s late for an appointment. You catch up with him easily, shouldering your pack. Never go anywhere without your kit. Them’s the rules.

 

There are no beaten trails here. Nothing to show that there’s anything out here except the trees, the insects, the birds - and both of you. 

Banner still doesn’t offer you any explanation. He is silent for most of the fifteen-minute walk, but just before you turn a corner around a stand of birches, with the humming of insects loud in the relative silence, he stops and says: “Look. I guess it’s going to be meaningless, but I just wanted to tell you that I don’t approve of this. What they’re doing - I don’t like it. And I don’t think you will either.” Your expression does not change, and he sighs. “So for what it’s worth. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Then he continues on, brushing a few branches aside, and in the next few steps you’re in front of a door: big, featureless and metal, entirely incongruous in the wilderness. And in typical S.H.I.E.L.D. fashion, you don’t see it until you’re pretty much on top of it. You’re not surprised. It’s entirely likely that nothing is ever going to surprise you again. Banner holds up a hand, evidently waving at a camera that is invisible to the naked eye, and the door opens.

Inside, the air conditioning is mercifully powerful. You follow Banner down some steep steps, and now you could be anywhere, because S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities are cookie-cutter perfect, like IKEA stores. The same layout all over the country, at least the ones you’ve been assigned to.

As soon as you hit the base of the steps, that unwelcome but familiar sense of proximity creeps over you: the scent of alien exhaustion and the sensation of being brushed by long hair. It takes you a moment to remember that this is not one of your dreams, and this realisation brings you up short for a moment, disorientated. But Banner is waiting with a door held open for you, and you walk right through into hell with no warning whatsoever.

Like you’ve thought before, it’s usually better that way. And nothing on earth could have prepared you for this anyhow.

The glass is soundproof. It’s also that special breed of ballistic glass that Stark Industries uses on all its limos, very thick, and insanely expensive. A charging mountain gorilla would bounce off it and probably give itself a near-fatal concussion into the bargain. The glass neatly cuts the room into two, running right across the middle, like someone was trying to set up a huge fish tank. On the one side, there’s the door, and you, and Banner, who is wringing his hands: and on the other, total bloody chaos.

There are six agents in there, three on the floor, three still on their feet. One of the three on the floor is leaking cerebrospinal fluid and blood. Not a promising outlook for her.

It looks like they’re in there because they’re trying to restrain Loki, and of all the bad ideas in the history of bad ideas, this has to be up there in the top ten. You turn a short look on Banner, whose current expression is sick with it all, but don’t ask the questions that are crowding your mind: why haven’t they gassed him? Darted him? Used the Hulk? Anything but this…this carnage that’s going on in there. In some ways you feel the answer may be that S.H.I.E.L.D. have never cared. Results, not consequences: resources, not people.

The way Loki moves barely looks humanoid, let alone human. His whipcord body turns and strikes like something with far fewer bones and much greater flexibility. But it’s not right: somehow you know that despite the terrible fight he is putting up, this is not what he should look like. He should be balletic, controlled, an aimed weapon. Instead he’s all over the place, erratic, lashing out like he can barely see straight. And still he’s winning.

You’re very glad you can’t hear the noise. Loki’s mouth is open in a constant, panting snarl, all white teeth and red tongue, and your brain overlays the imagined sounds of a Discovery Channel documentary - tigers in a fight. When he hoists an agent halfway up the wall and holds him there kicking fruitlessly, the rapid tattoo of boots against metal is hidden from you.

“He hasn’t slept since we brought him in.”

Banner has turned away and is looking at the door, not at you.

“And now he won’t eat. Won’t talk. He’s practically…” He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “Feral.”

It’s obvious that the doctor’s discomfort has a deeper, more personal trigger. His voice is quiet, weary. 

“We tried everything we could think of. We drugged him. He wouldn’t pass out. We reasoned with him. He wouldn’t listen. They even sealed off his oxygen once, but the results of that didn’t sit too well with Thor…well with anyone, really, but mostly Thor.”

“So why are _they_ in there?”

Your people. What remains of your organisation. That’s what you care about. They’re throwing their lives away, and for what?

 _But isn’t that what you always do?_ your brain mocks. _Resources, not people. Remember?_

“Subduing him enough that you can go in there and talk with him.”

Banner sounds deeply unhappy. “They’ll have him tied down in about another  minute. Usually takes less than five. He’s getting weaker all the time. Hasn‘t used any of his…little magic tricks at all in the past three days. We did have Thor helping, but even he‘s soured on the whole deal now. Still his brother, after all. And he thinks…well, never mind. He‘s not here, anyway.”

You take another look into the glass tank. Loki is half on his knees now, agents all over his back. He’s reached the self-defence stage of biting now, and his resemblance to a mindless animal is almost uncanny.

“What in hell makes you think he’s going to talk to me?”

You sound far calmer than you feel. The phantom scent of Loki’s sweat and misery is so far down your throat you’re almost choking. Your distaste is like a physical lump, blocking your breath. It’s taking all you have not to flash back on those dreams.

“Well, see, he wasn’t like _this_ ,” says Banner, indicating Loki’s rabid, snarling final attempts to break free, “before we mentioned your name."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You hold the final picture in your hand, date-stamped yesterday. Loki is looking right into the camera, mouth open in a roar, his teeth a blur of white. There’s a wide splash of bright blood across his nose, like a parody of ancient war-paint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no I never drank chocolate milk as a child why do you ask
> 
> WARNING: graphic descriptions of violence

It had been accidental, apparently. During one of the many inaugural examinations Loki had undergone here in his cell, an agent had referred back to your paperwork from Stark Tower. Had made a joke of it. That your handwriting was so typical of a doctor - quite unreadable. They’d particularly laughed about the scrawled signature of your name, deliberately misreading it, mispronouncing it, until finally, inevitably, one of them read it out correctly.

And as if somebody had just flipped a switch from passive lunacy to hyperactive psychopathy, Loki had gone crazy.

Three of them had died that first day after he heard your name. Within less than two minutes.

You demand that Banner shows you the report.

There are photos.

The first man has only the stubs of trachea left protruding from what remains of his throat. It looks like the aftermath of a lion kill, the flesh of his body rank and purplish and almost unreal. You hear Banner make a soft, pained sound.

“I wasn’t there,” he says. “Maybe if I had been…but he used his teeth, oh, god, it was so fast. I saw the tape -”

You don’t want to see the tape. You never want to see the tape. You turn a page. Another dead face, throat intact, but the neck canted at an unholy angle, like the bend of an elbow. The third - no face at all. Just a mask of meat. No eyes.

That was the first day. 

After that they got more cautious. By no means cautious enough, but they tried at least. The number of fatalities dropped.

And Loki - Loki just proceeded to get crazier and crazier. There are photographs of him as well. It’s as if you can see the sentience leaching out of his eyes as the timestamps pass: day by day the green eyes get glassier, pupils blown constantly wide and dark and round. The mad smiles become a mere baring of teeth. There is no thought behind them. You hold the final picture in your hand, date-stamped yesterday. Loki is looking right into the camera, mouth open in a roar, his teeth a blur of white. There’s a wide splash of bright blood across his nose, like a parody of ancient war-paint. 

This is a monster. The real fairytale monster that had been hidden when you’d first encountered him, hidden by the wounded, beaten man.

You can feel Bruce Banner’s hovering, apologetic presence, and you look up from the photo and through the glass into the cell.

Loki is on the floor. There’s a collar on his neck, shackles on his limbs, and he’s muzzled. But he is not subdued. Despite his restraints, he is still twisting and writhing like a freshly-slaughtered fish on the griddle. The agents in the cell are watching him, warily, until it seems they are satisfied he has exhausted his ability to strike. Then they chain the restraints to the wall, move to open the door, and in comes a stretcher crew to pick up the girl with the head wound.

The door closes behind them all, and Loki is alone in his cell. You look away. 

“We’ve tried everything else,” Banner says, and he sounds truly sorry. “And I know it sounds crazy. But we got no other way. It’s you, or we start treating him like a rabid dog, and I’m pretty sure you know how that turns out for the dog.” He shakes his head, removes his glasses briefly and rubs the bridge of his nose. “I wish I’d killed him back there,” he says. “Let the - the Other Guy kill him. It would have been better than this.”

“I don’t want to go in there,” you say. Your voice doesn’t sound sad, or frightened, or angry. You don’t sound like anything. You sound empty.

“I know,” Banner says. “I know.”

Then he doesn’t say anything more. He just stands there, silent and regretful, until an agent comes in through the outer door on your side, and tells you that you’re needed.

You make him repeat himself. Twice. You give him dumb insolence. You make him turn it into an order.

And then - only then - do you follow.

 

The inside of the cell has that distinct scent that you have woken up to for countless mornings since Stark Tower, only instead of it being faded, like the memory of a memory in a dream, it is strong and sour and everywhere. Once when you were a kid you spilt a chocolate milk onto your carpet. Being a kid, you’d figured that just mopping it with a pile of paper towel until you couldn’t really see any milk anymore would be enough. And it had been, for a few days. But it was summer, and the heat had risen, and so after that few days had the remainder of the milk, spoiled and rotten and quite ingrained into the carpet. No matter what you did, what your mother did, with detergent and disinfectant and finally tomato juice, the smell remained until they finally took the carpet up next spring.

Loki’s cell smells like that, with overtones of sweat and blood. The smell hits you first when the door opens. Then the light and the heat. The light is harsh and white and uncompromising, leaving no shadows in which to hide, and it seems unhealthily warm. Walking in from the corridor is like walking through soup. It’s enough to give you a headache, and you’ve barely been inside for a minute. Loki _lives_ here.

The door closes, you hear the lock engage, and you’re sealed in with the monster. You stand for a moment, take it all in, and just breathe. It’s like this in war zones. There is great danger here, but you have a job. To do your job you must be calm. So you breathe, take in all that fetid, musky air - ten in, ten out.

Once, twice. Then you approach the wall, where Loki waits.

And, as you approach, you use that next ten-out breath to say your own name aloud, identify yourself. 

You’re pretty sure this isn’t what Bruce (what all of them out there who are undoubtedly watching) are hoping for. You’re almost certain they’re hoping for the fairytale. For you to approach the beast and by your mere presence, turn him back into a prince.

For whatever magic your name holds to return Loki to his senses.

It does not work that way.

As soon as Loki sees you he strains to be at you, as if he is starving and can only eat human, as if there is nothing that drives him more in this world than to try and part your soul from your body. He can barely move, but what laxity the bonds allow him he takes every inch of it, eyes watering with the effort, the sweat streaking ugly lines down his face. The muzzle allows him no voice, as his jaw is tethered too closely, but the muffled noises are still awful, far too close to what you’d imagined while on the outside looking in. Animal sounds. Drool escapes from under the straps, dripping from his chin. 

You are used to human ugliness, but Loki’s sheer, feral inhumanity is something quite different: and it has the same effect on you as coming face to face with a shark while swimming alone at dusk in deep water. Every hair on your body prickles. Something lethal, something hungry is here with you and it is so far outside your understanding that there is no way of predicting what it will do, how it will turn.

This is the thing that has been lying at your side each morning, hair across your face, smelling alien and exhausted. The memory of the dreams overtakes you, and you feel dizzy, overwhelmed.

Loki rattles a relentless growl from behind his mask. Spittle drips onto the floor between his feet, a slow tap of liquid.

In a movement that is nothing to do with your training or your good sense, you stretch out your hand. And you touch him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His skin is clammy and hot and coated with a patina of dirt so it feels grainy, scaled, under your fingers. The sense of barely contained energy, that continual muscled motion that had looked so unpleasant in the python is right there, in the working of his jaw and the unbearable straining movement of his head. When you touch him your first instinct is revulsion at the way he feels, as if you’ve put your hand into a nest of hidden horrors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cats and snakes and tricksters, oh my

It’s always been a dream of yours to touch a tiger.

You were eight. You first saw tigers on TV. Huge cats, almost the size of horses to your mind, striped like bars of sunlight. You almost couldn’t conceive of something so big, when “cat” to you was something you could pick up and hold in your arms. When you were ten and saw your first real tiger at the Cincinnati Zoo, passing inches away from you behind the barrier, you could practically feel the smooth, flat hide, the almost-bristle of that close-lying fur. The hot, animal stink suffusing the air around you. You wanted to touch that pacing tiger more than anything else in the world, even though you knew that it could take your arm off with barely a thought. The call of the void is strong, as you have learnt in your adult life. That thing which pulls at us when we stand at the edge of the precipice, telling us against all sense to throw ourselves off. The dark tug of desire to simply pull a trigger, throw a punch, when the anger is high and the provocation almost (but not quite) too great. The void is in all of us, and even at ten years old you’d felt its teeth, as sharp and lethal as the teeth of that zoo tiger.

Later you went to the snake house, and met real horror for the first time. You didn’t want to meet the blank, staring beaded eyes, see the aching expandable jaws. The relentless undulation of the lemon python in particular had put your teeth on edge, as if it were under your skin, constantly moving and bulging, back and forth in the dim light. That pallid snake had never left you, those jewelled eyes, that sense of completely alien perception. If the tiger was your dream, these circling, muscular forms were your nightmare.  You’d moved through the musty, bitter-scented gloom as quickly as you could, and out again into the air, the sun.

But it had been a good day, all in all. Your father had bought you a plush tiger at the gift shop, and, clutching it that night, you had dreamt happily of the day when you would finally bury your hand in that real mane, feel the bristle of whiskers, because surely that day would come. It _had_ to come. Tigers had prowled your dreams, and even now, when you think of your father, you think of that long-ago tiger and how sure you‘d been that one day you‘d have that raw feline power under your palm.

 

You flatten your hand, moving from just fingertips to laying the whole length of your hand against his face.

Loki does not feel like your dream of a tiger. 

Loki feels like your nightmares of snakes.

His skin is clammy and hot and coated with a patina of dirt so it feels grainy, scaled, under your fingers. The sense of barely contained energy, that continual muscled motion that had looked so unpleasant in the python is right there, in the working of his jaw and the unbearable straining movement of his head. When you touch him your first instinct is revulsion at the way he feels, as if you’ve put your hand into a nest of hidden horrors. The memory of the acrid scent of the snakehouse fills your mind and your nose, a smell you’d thought long-forgotten. 

But something stops you from pulling your hand away, and that something is the fact that only this morning, when you’d pulled out of sleep Loki had once again been lying at your side, breathing harshly, shuddering and registering on even your half-awake senses as _wounded, exhausted, broken_.

You are asked sometimes if you treat the enemy. Like it’s even a consideration, when your unit is sent out, like you get to choose. Sure, to a certain point of view it seems oxymoronic. At your side in the field, your fellow agents are shooting down the foe, but once they’re down, if they’re alive, you’re there. And you’ll do your best to save them.

Whenever you’re asked this question, you tend to tailor your answer to your audience. There are some people who are never going to be impressed to hear that you treat the bad guy no differently than the good guy, once he’s down and leaking his guts out on the floor. Triage is for everyone. Whoever’s dying first gets treated first. And yes, if asked, you’ll give accounts of times you’ve been attacked and abused by the dying enemy you’re trying your best to save. Some people’s principles are greater and stronger than the value they place on their lives. Fanaticism in particular is so strong you could use it to build a wall around the world.

You’ve treated fanatics. Possession by principle. Their bodies puppeteered by words, thoughts and empty promises. They’re the ones that have stayed with you. Because sometimes - and yes, it’s been more than once - you’ve seen them at the very end. When the possession of principle finally cedes to the fears of the body, and you see in their eyes the doubt, then the dawning knowledge that _this is wrong, wrong after all -_

And then they die.

Possession is a terrible thing, and you can end up dying from it.

And this is why your hand stays put on Loki’s face, and no matter how much he snaps and snarls and throws his body about in the restraints, you stay. Because he’s alive and he’s not in control, and as your patient the only ethical thing to do is take that control for him. Treat him. Bring him back from the void that’s calling to him.

Or at very least, to make your voice call louder.

 

Your name doesn’t do it.

Your touch doesn’t do it.

Loki is a beast, a creature of madness, a thing driven by some terrible greater purpose without form. You speak to him, your hand upon him, feeling the terrible heat boiling off him through your skin.

Your voice doesn’t do it. He struggles there in his restraints, bound up tight, limbs held back in an unnatural spasm. It must be so uncomfortable.   

And suddenly, with a lurch of vertigo in your stomach, the memory of a memory of the dream -

_\- the keeper had taken the lemon python from its glass tank and the coils had poured in a relaxed, sick tangle out over her hands like spilt intestines -_

\- you know what you need to do.

“Banner,” you croak, as Loki spits and writhes in his bonds. “I need him - I need the ties slackened. I need him to be able to lie down.”

 

Now it’s their turn to be hesitant. They don’t want to do it. They have your sympathy, because you don’t really want to do it either. But as soon as the understanding had dawned, you’d felt rested and relieved for the first time in weeks, as if your body itself knew what was needed. There is absolutely nothing else to be done, and so the cell is full of people once more, trying to make this whole incredibly unsafe situation as safe as possible.

Bruce Banner now seems to have that furrow of worry engraved permanently between his eyes: you’re honestly humbled by his depth of caring for someone he barely knows beyond a name. He even comes the closest to you (and you haven’t moved from Loki, not an inch, even though he is growling constantly now, a rumble of furious sound, eyes darting violently at each agent in turn) and crouches down.

“Are you - are you sure?” he asks, for the third time.

You want to say something cliché. Throw a little bravado in. Like “Sure I’m sure.” or “I’ve never been less sure of anything in my life, but I’m doing it anyway.” But you’re honestly just so fucking tired and the instinct that drove you to give the order feels like the promise of rest. So you just nod. Again. And Bruce closes his eyes briefly, as if in pain.

“Okay,” he says. You only realise then that they’ve been waiting on him, that he’s the one in charge right now, when he gives the nod, and an agent in full riot gear - where the hell is _your_ riot gear? - hands you a switch-release. “You press that, he gets enough slack to lie full on the floor if he wants to. That’s also enough slack for him to tear your throat out. Just so you know.”

Oh, you know.

“Press it again, they’ll tighten up, he’ll be less able to move. Not completely unable. Just…less.”

Bruce stands up. You realise that the room has emptied around you. You and he, and the snarling creature, are the only ones here.

“I’d suggest you press it twice in very quick succession,” he says, and then leaves quickly, as if it hurts too much to look at you anymore.

The door has scarcely closed behind him when you press the button. You’ve never been one for putting off inevitable danger. Procrastination in war loses lives. Needless tension costs you calm. Lost calm costs you ability. Your thumb presses down firmly, in a deliberate motion that anyone who isn’t you might mistake for balls of steel.

The world contracts. You breathe in. You breathe out. The room seems obscenely quiet and still for the length of that one breath.

Loki lurches forward, carried by the momentum of his own struggling to tear you apart, and sprawls full length on the floor. He’s still hogtied close enough to save you from being instantly attacked, and even without being able to see him you can almost feel the will of Bruce Banner, desperate for you to press down again on the button, make yourself safe.

But you don’t. It’s only clear to you now that you never intended to, that this was never your body’s plan. Instead, you carefully lower yourself down next to Loki’s thrashing, snakish form, and gradually get lower until you are lying on your side, facing him, your faces less than a couple of feet apart. His expression is awful, virulent, quite mad. At this distance you can see the flush of every broken blood vessel in his eyes.

And then, just as deliberately, you turn your back to him, rolling onto your other side. And gracelessly, shuffling on the unforgiving floor, you manoeuvre yourself backwards, ignoring the terrible snarling, ignoring everything except the tiny voice of that instinct inside you that is saying, against all sense, _it’ll be ok, we can rest -_

Contact.

Your back fetches up against Loki’s chest, the deep rumble of his growling humming through you, the shivering tenseness of his every muscle enough to make you vibrate right along with him.

_In and out, the push of a half-ruined ribcage against your back._

You forget how to breathe in the same moment that Loki remembers. He draws breath in with a whooping, broken sound, as if he’s just come up from almost-drowning, and the noise is instantly recognisable. Dark hair spills over your shoulder, brushes your face, as his head falls forward in exhaustion.

This is your dream. This is where you have needed to be since Stark Tower.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is probably going to be your life now. Spending every minute of every day at Loki’s side, ready to wiggle your fingers like a TV psychic and hum nasally hypnotic noises to make him fall over should he become violent. Maybe you’ll even get some kind of fluorescent harness like a service animal. “Do Not Distract Me, I’m Working!” it’ll say on it, in big cheerful letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Reader is full of cynical weariness and Loki should be more helpful with explanations.

For a long moment you feel expectant, as if there’s something about to happen, and then the sick realisation hits you that you’re waiting to wake up.

Because this is where you always woke up before. You woke up and the dream faded. But the seconds are ticking past, relentless, and Loki is still lying there shuddering at your back. Unavoidably present and completely real. He sounds utterly dreadful, as if nothing has changed for him physically since he was scraped off the floor of Tony Stark’s penthouse.

You are pressed up against the body of possibly the most dangerous thing that exists on Earth right now, and all your idiot brain seems to be able to do is tell you that _this is cool, all is okay, nothing is wrong_.

What is happening? How can everything simultaneously be so twisted out of shape and so fittingly right? Loki gives a whole-body shiver, drawing in an impossibly long breath, as if he’s been unable to properly fill his lungs for years. 

You want to go to sleep, actually. The way it’s been lately, the quality of your sleep has suffered, and in the postdrome of adrenaline you’re suddenly bone-tired. That damnable social instinct that you can usually ignore - to have physical contact with others - is suddenly all that matters, concentrated into the feeling of Loki’s body pressed against yours. There’s nothing lustful or sexual about it. It’s simple contact. Every inch of the skin of your back where it touches him, even through your clothes, feels hyper-sensitive, drawing in every sensation and turning that sensation into soporific warmth. It’s hypnotic and addictive and feels so good that you have no defences against it.

It has, after all, been a very long time since anyone has held you or even touched you in simple kindness.

It is also the first time since your father died that you have realised that this very simple feeling, or rather the lack of it, has been an open wound in your soul.

You have no idea how long you stay in that state, hovering on the edge of sleep, hanging half in and half out of dreams. But eventually, your training kicks back in and helps you take back control of your body. Like hypothermia, exhaustion can be insidious, and it speaks to you in gentle, soothing tones. But as an agent, you are able to recognise this for the dangerous slow death that it is, and you fight back by starting to move. Slowly at first. Drumming your fingers. Focusing on that movement, the feeling of the floor beneath the pads of your fingertips, the hard impact as each finger comes down. The little flickers of physical energy used and the concentration on the drumming are bringing your mind out of its trance. Next comes flexing your arms. Finally you push up off the floor, and as your dizzy head adjusts to the change in altitude, you realise the room is silent.

Loki has stopped wheezing.

He now isn’t making any sounds at all.

You examine him immediately, hands all over him, airway, chest, pulse points. He is lying in his bonds, trussed up like a turkey, and he is utterly limp, his eyes closed. You are not panicking. It is the work of moments to confirm that he is alive, and moments more to be sure that he is (just as you almost were) deeply asleep. You lean in very close to his face. He _is_ breathing, but deep and slow and almost soundless, miles away from his pained gasping of earlier.

You check a few more times to be certain, but hold off on your more aggressive methods of checking for fakery as you genuinely don’t want to wake him. A sternum rub is pretty much always effective, but it hurts like hell and is hardly warranted when the dangerous patient is apparently doing nothing more suspicious than taking a nap.

A deep nap. A _very_ deep nap.

You sit up, settle into a cross-legged position with your knees still brushing Loki‘s huddled form, and raise your eyes in a what-now shrug to the tinted glass wall. You know that although you can’t see out, Bruce Banner and his small army of agents can see in, and you wonder what they’re thinking. You decide the best option is to sit patiently and wait for orders like a good little drone.

Maybe you look like a superhero to them right now. Your one weirdly specific power: dropping a crazy Asgardian like he was a chicken in a trance. Tonic immobility tailored to one individual only, the least useful super-power in the world. This is probably going to be your life now. Spending every minute of every day at Loki’s side, ready to wiggle your fingers like a TV psychic and hum nasally hypnotic noises to make him fall over should he become violent. Maybe you’ll even get some kind of fluorescent harness like a service animal. “Do Not Distract Me, I’m Working!” it’ll say on it, in big cheerful letters. People could sponsor you.

God, what an awful concept.

Time passes. Loki remains unconscious. Nobody comes in. The outer door remains steadfastly locked. Being as you’re relatively sure that nothing short of an earthquake is going to rouse the patient from his unnatural slumber, you decide to risk it, and raise your voice.

“Hello?”

There’s no clock in here. You left your watch and everything else that could potentially be used as a weapon outside. There is nothing in here of note other than you, the fallen god in his restraints, and the control button for said restraints. Literally nothing. Not a shelf, not a book, not a bed. Just you and that rank smell of despair and madness. You find yourself not even wanting to know how they’ve been handling the sanitary arrangements in this minimalist environment. Do gods piss in buckets? Do gods piss at all? Is this even a question that you want to know the answer to?

You check on Loki once more, just for luck. He’s still sleeping. His skin is cool, not that furious animal heat from earlier. He’s not even twitching.

“God _damnit.”_

Without even giving it a thought, you stand up, intending to go and hammer on the door until someone has to come and stop the noise. And as soon as you are no longer touching him, Loki gasps, his eyes snapping open, and begins to twist once more in his bonds.

And greatly to your surprise, he speaks.

“You’re not asleep!” he says, his voice a pained, angry hiss. “Why aren’t you sleeping? _I need you to sleep!”_

 

Things seem to happen quite quickly after that. Funnily enough, as soon as Loki shows this tiny sign of coming back to sanity, the room is full of people again. What a surprise. Maybe this makes you a crushing cynic, but you can’t help but feel that should Loki have remained a drooling, mindless vegetable, you could have been stuck in there with him for the rest of your life. With them just waiting for that small chance that you would work your magic. One day. There would always have been another day. And another. Until you died of boredom or old age.

However, the sudden flurry of activity has precisely the opposite effect that they would want. As soon as you’re no longer alone with him, Loki makes a completely inhuman noise that rumbles and rattles up through his chest like a swarm of huge wasps inhabiting the echoing carcass of an impossible dragon, and starts once again to thrash. Somebody dives for the controller, ready to push that button again, immobilise Loki, drag him away from you. Evidently it isn’t soon enough, as something warm spatters your face, and you wipe away blood with your fingertips, hearing distantly the sharp swearing of a fellow agent who’s just had his nose broken.

Perhaps it’s this which distracts you - as fresh blood in your eyes tends to do - or perhaps it’s the concerned voice of Bruce Banner, calling you by name as you turn -

Either way, you turn just too late to avoid the glancing blow from Loki’s tethered legs, hefted high as the agents try to wrestle his serpentine body away. You take his feet to your temple, right in the thinnest spot, and the numbness feels as if it’s spreading from the point of impact down into your neck, your torso, your whole body, as if it’s slowing your heart. Your eyes stop working properly, watering profusely, your vision blurring and filled with tiny flares of light.

You fall, aware only vaguely of breaking that fall with outstretched hands, and you pass out. As a doctor, it should seem odd to you that you hadn’t previously appreciated just how close being forcibly knocked out actually is to sleep.

To gods, it seems, the difference is less than nothing.

Your body falls, and somewhere less physical, your mind falls with it.

And Loki is there. He catches you.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You will be tearing out throats and eating noses as soon as we return. There will be two of us sharing that cell, and if they do not tie me quickly enough, it is likely we will fight, and I shall kill you. Or if they do tie me, we will sit there companionably in our shared bondage, reeking of sweat and blood and madness until they get bored of their game and drown us both like rabid dogs in a bucket."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise....I'm not dead. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for this. My life is complicated in the bad way and sometimes I don't cope so well.  
> Thank you for the reviews, I promise they have all lightened my heart and I will reply to every one.

If pressed (and you’d have to be pressed - talking about yourself is not your favourite occupation) you’d always have described yourself as down-to-earth. When the other kids were daring each other to say _bloody mary bloody mary_ , you were staring yourself down in the mirror, learning to meet your own eyes without flinching. When people blessed each other for sneezing or threw salt over their shoulders, you just watched, marvelling at the superstition and the inherent gullibility of humanity. You’re not at all religious, and there’s a reason for that. To you, religion has always been the largest branch of superstition: the biggest Bloody Mary game of all.

The fact that you seem to have fallen into the arms of a god in some kind of metaphysical star-studded hinterland infuriates you almost beyond measure. How _dare_ this be happening. How dare you be in this - this _non-place_ outside your known reality, where your body seems both there and not there in a baffling and enraging duplicity.

And particularly, how _dare_ Loki be staring down at you in a supercilious manner that you just know has to be as fake as the whirling constellations that seem to surround you both. For some reason you’re currently unclear on, you’re absolutely certain that he has no more fucking idea what’s happening than you have.

And despite the fact that you’ve heard him speak, despite the fact that he’s standing there holding you while looking as poised and aloof as a Greek statue, you somehow know that really - _really_ really - back in the reality you call your own he is still a slavering beast. This is the eye of the storm, a tiny impossible patch of calm and silence. This is not what is. It is a dream of what is not.

The blurring stars cluster above you in sickening, vertiginous spirals. Loki seems to be standing on the dusty, dappled clouds of multiple nebulae, his feet scattering stellar fragments. There’s no real up. There’s no real down. No atmosphere, no wind. You cannot feel any air touching your face or hands, either cold or warm. You are not in pain, nor are you hungry or tired. The only sensations you can feel anywhere on your body are from where he is touching you.

You are in the mouth of the snake, dangling above the precipice, and he has his fangs gripped on your nape. But you are not afraid.

You are furious. The sense of losing control has always made you furious, and hanging in the arms of a mad god in a limbo of stars does not constitute an exception.

“Put me the fuck down.”

He arches an eyebrow.

“I don’t think you know what you’re asking for.”

“I didn’t ask for _any_ of this. Put me down.”

His chest heaves, arms clutching you tighter, reflexively, as he sighs.

“Very well. I hope you enjoy the taste of human flesh.”

Your brain refuses to process this. It’s the last in a long line of things your brain is giving you shit for lately.

“What.”

“Human meat,” says Loki, annoyingly upbeat. “Human blood. In your mouth. I hope you enjoy it.”

“Not particularly. I‘ve had other people’s blood in my mouth before.”

He laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. It makes you more determined to struggle, which you do, but his arms flex and tighten on you like steel wire. He _really_ doesn’t want to drop you. Interesting. And worrying.

“What about dying? Do you like dying, mortal? I assume you must. You’re always doing it, after all, all of you. It‘s like a hobby.”

“Where _are_ we?” 

“We are sharing a subconscious,” he replies, testily indulgent, as if giving class to a bunch of pre-schoolers. “A dream. This is not a place. This is us. The sky is you. The floor is me. And vice versa.”

You look around at the shifting, galactic emptiness that surrounds you. Under other circumstances it might be beautiful. Right now it turns your stomach.  _Fuck_ these Asgardian hippies and their cosmic bullshit. You are not a place. You are a person, and you are not inside him. The thought alone makes you nauseous, and the queasy lurch in your gut reminds you of something.

“And how exactly would that make me a cannibal?”

He sniffs in amusement again, and you’re suddenly (horribly) reminded that to Loki, eating human flesh is not cannibalism because he is not human. It’s probably on a par with eating bushmeat for him. The morality of the superior species always feels unfair to the inferior - which is why the heart of most human comedy is based in punching upwards, not downwards.

“I, as the stronger, am choosing to hold us like this. In this one moment. In a single state, the one with the other, so we may converse. If I let go,” he says, “then there will be nothing keeping our selves separate. And your weaker self will easily be absorbed by my own. You will be tearing out throats and eating noses as soon as we return. There will be two of us sharing that cell, and if they do not tie me quickly enough, it is likely we will fight, and I shall kill you. Or if they do tie me, we will sit there companionably in our shared bondage, reeking of sweat and blood and madness until they get bored of their game and drown us both like rabid dogs in a bucket.“ His sharp green eyes look directly down at you and his grip slackens, just a little.  His long fingers flex. A message? No, more overt: a definite warning.

“Still want me to put you down?”

 

On the battlefield, in the operating theater, in life - it often feels as if there are no right choices. Nevertheless, there are always choices. The primary reason so many people are so unhappy in this day and age is that they believe that all choice has been taken away from them, and that they are solely bound to the choices of others. This is never true. There are always choices. Always. Even if they are not good, easy to make, or the ones you wanted, or they are all almost as bad as each other - they are still choices. They are _your_ choices. You can always choose. You may not want to, but you can. 

You can choose not to go to work in the morning, and for every other morning after that, but you will likely be fired and then you will not have money. You can choose not to pay for the expensive dental treatment that you need, but then you will probably have no teeth and an infection and a larger medical bill. You can choose to be part of society, with all the restrictions and stresses and benefits that infers, or you can go and live in a cave on a hill and be beholden to no-one.  Sometimes your choices can change the outcomes of a situation. And sometimes the outcome will be the same, regardless. You can’t count the times that you have seen people try different methods to cheat death with the same final result. They choose to strive or they choose to submit.

But there is _always_ a choice. So what will it be?

 

Your hands slip into the folds of clothing at Loki’s shoulder and chest, and grip harder and harder until your knuckles stand out whitely in the unnatural glow of the unreal stars.

“Good choice,” says Loki, sounding hugely smug, the bastard.

“Take us back,” you say, and in contrast you sound dead inside, your voice flat and inflectionless. “Take us back now.” Because you don’t like it here, in this dream world where the only real thing to be felt is Loki and you sense you cannot trust your eyes.

“Me?” says Loki, still jovial (although you suspect there’s a new core of cold in his tone). “This is not my doing. I could not come here alone. This is a place for sharing. I needed you.”

“Why.”

You’re asking, but in all honesty you’re not even interested anymore. All you can think of is your own couch, with battered caved-in cushions and the motor oil stain from when it was stored in the garage and all. You crave silly things. Oreo cookies with half and half. The red and green blanket you bought in Thailand that shrank in the wash. The weird smell of that scented candle you won at a Christmas fair, musty and woodish. You want your own real things back, no matter how ridiculous or small they are. Not the outlandish glory of these brilliant false stars or the terrible, solid reality of the mad god who holds you.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” says Loki, but in stark contrast to your own misery, he sounds positively _delighted_.


End file.
